Gervais to host Radio 2 Christmas show

Ricky Gervais is to make his BBC Radio 2 presenting debut on Christmas Eve, with a show poking fun at bad presents.

Gervais will be joined by regular collaborators Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington for the show, which will be broadcast between 10am and noon on December 24.

The trio, whose radio presenting careers took off with their offbeat Xfm Saturday show, will be back on Radio 2 on New Year's Eve for three hours from 10am, casting a gimlet-eye over the new year's honours list.

Gervais and Merchant honed their sardonic, slightly shambolic presenting style on Xfm, with Pilkington as the producer of the Saturday lunchtime show but increasingly becoming part of an on-air triple-act.

They also this week launched a weekly half-hour podcast distributed via the Guardian Unlimited website.

The Gervais podcast has clocked up around 130,000 downloads since going live on the Guardian website on Monday.

It went to No 1 in the download chart on iTunes' UK website within 24 hours, replacing Radio 1's Chris Moyles, and remains in the top spot today.

In the US, the Gervais podcast is number 3 in the iTunes download chart today. · To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857

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